Monday "Is it true," asks Zero Anstiss in her slightly hoarse voice, "that you new Labour people are all control freaks?" I put down my Bourbon - half nibbled - and begin to try and contact "the politician within", the person - M always says - who must provide the answers when things are tricky. It is the politician within who takes over when that unexpected question is fired by Paxman or his clones, the PW who kicks in when that Tory raises a tricky supplementary in the House, the PW who guides the mouth away from disaster and towards the relative safety of the intuited party line. He may make the real person seem flat or evasive, but the politician within has saved lives and stopped wars.

I can generally summon him by imagining how M might deal with this or that situation; the autopilot assuming M's shape and tone. But when, as now - during this coffee-break in the deliberations of the cross-departmental marriage and relationship counselling working group - it is Lynton the man who has been dominant, the PW may have retreated too far to be instantly accessible. For a moment, therefore, he is replaced by splutter.

"Are you all right?" Zero asks sympathetically, as a fountain of crumbs shoots out of my mouth, accompanied by a harsh noise that might be mistaken for my voice. "Let me pat your back." She stands up and takes a swing at my spine, which suddenly finds itself propelled, so it seems, through the front of my chest. However painful, it does the trick; the vaguely romantic, human Lynton who had been enjoying a tete-a-tete with an attractive woman is replaced by the professional politician.

I thank her for her solicitude. She tells me that it was no problem, and - indeed - that she was quite looking forward to performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on me, had things not cleared up. "OK," I say, blushing slightly, "but now let me try and deal with your earlier question about control-freakery." Painstakingly I guide her through the various accusations laid against us. I explain that the procedure for selecting members of the Scottish Parliament was agreed by the Caledonians among themselves, and that some of them only started getting shirty when they weren't picked. No one, I go on, is stopping Rhodri Morgan from standing in a ballot for Welsh top man. The so-called "gag" on NEC members is actually only a series of guidelines about how to deal with the media - and so I go on.

"Does that mean," Zero queries, her one eye glinting mischievously, "that Ken Livingstone may be allowed to stand for mayor of London? Will he not be brutally silenced, forced to recant, expelled, frozen out and generally treated abominably?" Gently I put her right. The control aspect of new Labour, I tell her, has been much exaggerated. Actually our record shows that we are into sharing power, pluralism, drawing in Pattens, Heseltines, Ashdowns, Jenkinses, allowing the Scots, the Welsh and Londoners to have their own representation. The politician within paints a picture of exceptional, almost suicidal, generosity.

I finish, and sit back to savour this sexy lady's response to my eloquence. But her blood-red mouth is drawn down over her impossibly white teeth in a moue of disappointment. I ask her what's wrong. "If," she tells me, "I'd wanted niceness I'd have emigrated to New Zealand. Or gone to work for the Dutch Family Planning Association. Lynton, darling, I like power. I like determination. I'm looking for a control freak!"

The politician within deflates rapidly, and the real man takes over. "Well, yes," I tell her. "When I said that Ken Livingstone might well be allowed to stand, the actual truth is . . . " Within minutes we are friends again.

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